The Good Vs. The Best

Sermon for 1 Lent (C RCL 2/21/2009), Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:1-2,9-16; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

My friends, we have now begun our Lenten journey together, and as always, every year on this first Sunday of Lent we hear about the testing of the Lord in the wilderness immediately after his baptism. It is always fascinating to note that it is the Holy Spirit who led Jesus out into the wilderness to be tested. There is a divine plan at work here.

It seems that Jesus is just beginning to awaken now to the possibilities of his own power. We know very little about how he spent his adult years before his baptism. But it is clear that his baptism by John in the Jordan was a crucial turning point. By this event, the Lord was launched into the public as the Teacher, the Messiah. But before he can begin to use his power in ways that bring healing to the people, he must reject decisively the false use of this power.

Luke positions this story here as something similar to the traditional Greek hero stories with which his readers would have been very familiar. These Greek heroes always had to go through some period of testing and trial before they could begin their heroic quest. And so our Lord is in a similar position here. It seems that these tests are necessary before he can begin his public ministry.

And in these temptations, we see primarily what kind of Messiah Jesus will NOT be. The vision of what kind of Messiah he truly IS comes in the chapters that follow, leading up to his Passion, when he freely suffers on our behalf.

Henri Nouwen has written a masterful little book on the temptations that Jesus faced here in the wilderness and what they mean for Christian leaders. In his work called In the Name of Jesus (Crossroad, New York, 1991), Nouwen has described the three temptations that our Lord faced in the following way:

• The temptation to be relevant (turning stones into bread)

• The temptation to be powerful (ruling over the nations)

• The temptation to be spectacular (jumping off of the temple)

We need to recognize that the true temptations in life are NOT between doing good and doing bad. Anyone who has matured beyond childhood can typically recognize very easily the difference between right and wrong: that causing pain to others is wrong and to be avoided. Rather, the true temptations in life are always between what is perceived to be good and what is in fact the best.

It is good for Jesus to turn stones into bread.

It is good for Jesus to have authority over the nations of the world.

It is good for Jesus to display to the world his divine power and strength.

All of these are good things, but they are not the best. To turn stones into bread, to feed the hungry people of the world, is good, but it is too small, too little, too short-sighted.

The way of Jesus must be deeper than that. Henri Nouwen described the implications in this way: “The task of [future] Christian leaders is not to make a little contribution to the solution of the pains and tribulations of their time, but to identify and announce the ways in which Jesus is leading God’s people out of slavery, through the desert to a new land of freedom” (Nouwen, p. 67).

Power is abandoned by the Lord in favor of the true and deep healing of the human heart. Think about it: in the end, it would make no difference at all if Jesus were to feed all the hungry people of the world, or rule all the nations of the world, or display his power so definitively that everyone would respect his authority – if, after doing all of this, people still created systems where the poor were oppressed and manipulated, where the vulnerable were violated, if people continued to hate others in their hearts, where people lied and manipulated in order to get their way. The change that Jesus seeks to bring into the world begins within each human heart.

What did we hear today from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans? “One believes with the heart and so is justified.” One trusts in Jesus with the heart and so one begins to be made right and good from the inside out.

Here right at the start, Jesus had to make a clear choice about which direction to take with his future. His intention for us is that we learn to make good choices, wise decisions from the heart based upon our commitment to love and serve God and our neighbor.

This is not a popular message. You know how it is. In our culture, we give the greatest honors to the ones who are effective in getting things done; to the competent managers who are able to accomplish the task at hand with efficiency. I understand this point of view. I am a very practical sort of guy, and I have found it helpful to have a simple and realistic view of life.

And in very simple terms, Jesus had the ability and the opportunity to solve the vexing problems of humankind. Feed the hungry world, provide wise government for all people, ot unite humankind around himself.

But he chose a different way, a better way, the best way. It is better to pray than to manage. It is better to listen than to speak. It is better to have a heart that is open to the movement of the Holy Spirit than a mind which is filled with its own good ideas.

Do you see the challenge here? This is an entirely different way of looking at life! The problem is that we become so easily enamored with our own brilliant plans! But true, deep, abundant life as Jesus’ experienced it, and as he opens it up to us, is a life of response. By living within the framework of the kingdom of God as Jesus did, we recognize that all of the initiative of life belongs to God. What we do is to respond to that divine initiative.

It’s a different way of seeing life, this Jesus way. You probably think that you are here in church right now because you want to be here, or because someone else forced you to be here! That’s all well and good, but if we push deeper, if we look at our situation with the eyes of Jesus, we understand that each one of us is here now in this place because God has brought us here. And God has a plan for us.

Someone once offered this bit of pithy advice when it comes to temptation: “Don’t worry too much about avoiding temptation, because as you grow older, it will avoid you!”

Well, I don’t think that applies here, because no matter what age we are, we are always tempted to settle for what is shallow and weak, for what is on the surface only. Jesus made the choice to go deeper, to push through to the heart of the matter. Now, as we walk with him in our Lenten journey, may we also not be content to accept easy solutions, quick fixes, shallow wisdom. Let us push on deeper into our hearts with the Lord, so that there we can discover the Holy Spirit’s healing touch, and be changed from the inside out. Amen.